It’s not elementary!

ABSTRACT. The paper outlines the personality of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s great fictional detective Sherlock Holmes from the perspective of personality trait psychology. Relying on evidence extracted from the sixty texts (short stories and novels) that form the so-called “canon,” we follow up the hypothesis that the detective combines symptoms possibly indicating a form – and degree – of personality disorder, supposedly the schizoid one; this is meant to provide ground for an overall explanation of the behavioural pattern and traits of the hero. pp. 38–50